And that’s interesting, considering roughly 90% of the basketball questions the Spartans have been answering this week have to do with stopping Duke when the teams meet Saturday in the national semifinals.

The short answer on that is simple: They can’t. They won’t.

But what they can do is score, a lot, and enough to advance to Monday’s national title game if they can put together their most efficient, mistake-free, surgical offensive performance yet.

“We pose some problems for those guys as well,” MSU associate head coach Dwayne Stephens said, after going through all of MSU’s defensive challenges in this game. “They’ve got to defend us in the pick and roll. They’ve got to get back in transition. This should be a fun game.”

Given my knack for predictions, Lucas Oil Stadium will probably see a 45-43 game Saturday night. There’s really nothing to suggest that, though, in watching these teams play — now or when they met back in November in the same city, an 81-71 Duke win.

Yes, both are much better defensively. MSU’s defense has been among the best in this tournament, and it’s far beyond what seemed possible back then. This is the ultimate example of Tom Izzo team defense because he usually has several players who can shut down elite players on their own.

That same defense needs to show up Saturday and make Jahlil Okafor work for his shots, clamp down on driving lanes, contest shots. That same defense can keep the Spartans in the game. It’s just not going to win it for them.

Duke’s too good. Okafor is going to score and make sharp passes. Quinn Cook is going to hit shots. Tyus Jones is going to get into the lane and create. Justise Winslow is going to do all of the above. And considering what we saw from the Blue Devils in Texas, Matt Jones will probably hit a couple threes for good measure.

The thing you have realize about last weekend in Syracuse is that, yes, MSU was terrific defensively in the second halves of both games. But Oklahoma helped with panicked, bad shot selection. And I have no idea what Louisville was trying to do in the second half, but “running an offense” was not on the list.

Duke is too gifted, balanced and well-coached to fall into the same drudgery. The flip side, though, is that Oklahoma and Louisville both presented more problems for MSU with their defenses than will Duke.

That is, as long as the Spartans take care of the ball. No statistic will mean more Saturday. No statistic meant more in the first meeting, when 13 MSU giveaways turned into 24 Duke points.

And the Blue Devils will try to harass the Spartans into more of the same Saturday, even though this is Izzo’s best team in terms of valuing the ball — 11.2 turnovers a game, lowest in his 20 years, and just 9.1 in the past 13 games. Duke no doubt saw Louisville stay in the game with three “picks for touchdowns,” as Izzo calls them, in the second half.

Without those mistakes, there would have been no drama late in that game, no overtime. MSU would have won going away. More mistakes like that Saturday night and there won’t be any late drama on the Lucas Oil floor, either — Duke will win by double digits.

If MSU turns possessions into shots, though? The first vulnerability to attack is Okafor.

“I think you’ve got to put him in ball screens, you got to make him move, make him do some things,” Izzo said of the 6-foot-11 freshman and likely No. 1 pick in June. “Hopefully we’ll have some wrinkles that we’ll try to put in. If there’s any weaknesses, to try to find them.”

There are. And MSU leads the Big Ten and is fifth nationally with 16.7 assists per game, and Travis Trice and Denzel Valentine are playing like a pro backcourt.

In the first meeting, MSU got countless good shots but finished just 5-for-20 from three. The Spartans will need to double that number of makes and get to 75 points, and then they’re looking at one or two plays to decide the game — and a decent shot at another one.